1. Black Flag | Nervous Breakdown
When you're a kid you listen to what your parents listen to or what your siblings listen to. Your friends can't turn you on to shit because they are stuck in the same situation, mom's records, dad's radio, big brother's MTV. This is 1997, nobody has the Internet (at least none of the skids I hung out with did) and besides Napster & Audio Galaxy were still years away. Thank god for skateboarding! Skateboarding blew the fog away, blew the roof off of the fucking house. Black Flag, Fang, Minor Threat, Cro-Mags. I shaved my head, by myself, at midnight, with a dull blade, blood streaming down my forehead and the back of my neck. Fuck the Beatles and the Stones, I would never listen to the radio again. Notable mention: Fang - Land Shark

2. The Smiths | Still Ill
The skateboard shop was the cultural hub of the small town I grew up in. This is where the music was; this is where the passion was. Every day after school I would race down to the shop as fast as I could, so excited to hear what was playing on the CD player. The older guys who hung out there were listening to the most incredible music, Dinosaur Jr., Sonic Youth, Wipers. During summer break I would be at the shop first thing in the morning, every morning, and I would hang out all day and all night. Whenever I was away from the shop I would get this overwhelming anxiety imagining all of the incredible music that I was missing out on. The owner showed me this band from England called the Smiths and that was it, my life was forever changed. I would skate around singing out loud at the top of my lungs. Driving around all night with the bass turned down and the treble all the way up (I swear on a stack of 100 burned CDs that it sounded better that way). I remember that one summer I spent about two weeks hanging out at the Youth Employment Resource Center because it was the only place that had the Internet. Under the guise of looking for a job I would spend literally ALL DAY reading Morrissey interviews while my friends were enjoying the weather. I was a Smiths lyric and I was in love. Notable mention: Morrissey - Why Don't You Find Out For Yourself

3. The Modern Lovers | Modern World
Of course I'm hearing all of the 1977 New York stuff at this time as well, and it's an incredible treasure trove. Richard Hell, Television, Ramones, Talking Heads, all that stuff. I got really into the Talking Heads at his time, I remember going to a Karaoke bar and singing Cities from Fear Of Music. It was such a bizarre track to see at Karaoke. Not exactly a top 40 hit. Anyway, I sang this song and afterwards this dad comes up to me smelling like farts and he says, Hey, man, have you ever thought about singing professionally? and he hands me a business card. Who does that!? I'm thinking, who is this fucking chump? I say, Have you ever heard of Brian Eno? He says, No. So I called him a NARC and went back to my friends. The Modern Lovers record was huge for me. I would drive around all night listening to this album. Jonathan's lyrics really spoke to me and the guitar and keyboard playing seemed super Punk, but a different kind of Punk than California Punk or NY Hardcore, and the lyrics were cleverer, and so romantic! Notable mention: Richard Hell - Love Comes In Spurts

4. The Birthday Party | Mutiny In Heaven
There wasn't really a Goths scene at my High School. There was one guy who wore a trench coat and listened to Marilyn Manson and another two or three characters that were really into NIN (But they were also really into Korn). I was hanging out with all these older guys, driving around, getting into trouble, and I showed this guy a NIN CD. He was like oh, you like that stuff? Check this stuff out, this is the real shit! and he put on the most insanely cataclysmic sounding music I had ever heard, the Mutiny EP. I was overwhelmed! The first Bad Seeds record too, From Her To Eternity, Cabin Fever, Well Of Misery, just the most miserable music I had ever heard. And the lyrics were so smart! I decided at this point that there was music that was being made by musicians and then there was ART that was being made by ARTISTS. The difference was pure fucking SOUL, either you had it or you didn't, and if you didn't I could smell it from a mile away. Notable mention: Suicide - Rocket U.S.A.

5. Joy Division | Heart And Soul
My closest friend at the time was about 5 years older than me. I had just graduated High School while he had graduated years ago. We would get into all sorts of trouble going on these wild all night adventures, exploring the suburbs and going into the city, doing drugs. Kids were going to raves and shit, but that seemed so moronic to me. I needed adventure. If I was going to get high and stay up all night I wanted to be ripping around on the highway or exploring an abandoned factory at 3am. It was around this time that two critical things happened: #1 I met and started hanging out with Clint and #2 My best friend, this older guy, started to spiral into a wild psychosis. He was always a weird guy, but some suddenly a chemical shift happened in his brain and he started having schizophrenic episodes. I remember that on a whim he decided to cut the roof off of his car with a circular grinder and speed down the highway with the back seat on fire. He was having a really tough time coping with these episodes and obviously things were getting heavy so his doctors started trying all of these different medications (of course I was experimenting with them too). One day in the summer he simply disappeared. A couple months later we found out that he had been checked into a special hospital away from everybody. In the last few weeks he had been doing better, so the doctors were allowing him to receive visitors. We went to visit him and snuck him out of the ward. We crossed the busy highway on foot, he with a bomber jacket over his hospital gown, and lay down in the long grass to smoke a joint. I remember this scene so distinctly, the summer was ending, and the sky was turning orange, the smell of the highway and grass, the heat waves rising from the pavement distorting the hospital in the distance. The despair was incredible. We left him there and drove home listening to Closer at an incredibly high volume, windows down, heavy hearts, and heavy eyelids. Notable mention: The Cure - Charlotte Sometimes

6. Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark | 2nd Thought
I had graduated High School and I had no idea what I was supposed to do next. That autumn theinsiders went to College and the rich kids went traveling in Europe. We just tried to understand what we were supposed to do, where we were supposed to go? The first two Orchestral Maneuvers In The Dark records were the soundtrack of my winter. Driving around the city and suburbs, crashing parties, trying to find our Art, trying to find our oeuvre. The lyrics to 2nd Thought were bang on: all the order in our lives left some time ago, we are the ones who never cry, like we don't care. Notable mention: Wipers - Doom Town7. Scott Walker | Montague Terrace (In Blue)
Nothing was going right; my close friends were literally losing their minds, girl problems (obviously), family problems, and psychological problems. I moved to another city and pretty much stopped hanging out with everyone. I got a job as a video store clerk. I worked the closing shift and after I closed at midnight I would often hang out in the store just listening to music or watching movies alone in the dark. I was listening to a lot of Birthday Party and the Smiths still, but it was too bombastic. I needed something to quietly smoke cigarettes to. Enter Scott Walker. This discovery was a moment of pure magic. I immediately fell in love and devoured all of his music. By this time I had finally gotten a dial-up Internet connection at home (kids will never understand this) and was slowly opening my heart up to quieter, gentler, more miserable music. Notable mention: Nick Drake - Rider On The Wheel

8. Leonard Cohen | Hey, That's No Way To Say Goodbye
My years of splendid isolation, I went to College to study Photography, I read Fiction furiously, I wrote bad poetry, I played with keyboards and home recording... But mostly I sat and I smoked, and I waited for it to snow.9. David Bowie | Oh! You Pretty Things
Out of the blue one night I got an email from Clint. We hadn't seen each other for five or six years. He said that he had been playing music in bands and wanted to know what I was up to, why was I living alone in the mountains? I should be living life and making Art, not reading about it. I showed him the stuff I had being working on, he said it sounded as if Daniel Johnson had bought a synthesizer, I thought it sounded more like OMD with a sense of humor. I told him I had a song where a girl kills herself at an all night discotheque, but it's not her suicide that upsets me; it was that she bled all over my sneakers. We started spending more time together, slowly; I had forgotten how to be friends with someone. Eventually we started writing songs together, and then we started recording an album (Ghosts Emerging) with this other cat called Felix Fung. I loved Felix because he was older and wiser and smoked a lot of pot and made really good tea. He also turned me on to some excellent music that I had somehow overlooked. Bands like the Magnetic Fields, Slowdive, among others. Now this might sound bizarre, but I had never listened to David Bowie. How? I don't understand. How could I love the Smiths and Eno and Iggy, but never listened to a Bowie record? I know, I know, I know... CRAZY. Notable mention: The Magnetic Fields - Take Ecstacy With Me

10. Death In June & Boyd Rice | Get Used To Saying No!
This song slowly became my mantra through a tumultuous twenties, full of constant heartbreak and permanent existential crises: If
your character and that of those around you were soft and sweet like
marshmallows you would never become the person destiny has ordained. It helped me secure an understanding of who I am and what is important to me: If you clash with the character of one person or another it has to be
that way, you are not a dollar bill to be liked by everyone. And I have a feeling that it will inform the next thirty years of my life: Don't succumb to that disease of character whose symptoms are a general
lack of seriousness, unsteadiness in action and speech... In a word:
frivolity.

SIDE B | by Sean Gilhooly

1. Elton John | Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
I think everybody's parents had Elton John's greatest hits in the 70s and this was the song that stuck out for me. The Muppets helped I'm sure.

2. Michael Jackson | Beat It
One of the other records my parents had was Thriller, again like everybody else. But this was my favorite track. I guess it was because it was the most Rock on the record, but the musicianship on the whole album is incredible.

3. George Gershwin | Rhapsody In Blue (Played by Royal Philharmonic Orchestra with Christopher O'Riley; Conductor: Barry Wordsworth)
I listened to my mom's recording of this as a kid and was really taken with the melodies. The slower section moves me a great deal even today.

4. Miles Davis | So What
When my drum teacher had me play along with a cassette tape of this track I started to understand a whole different way of thinking with drumming. Total life changer. Before that all I knew about Jazz was from The Cosby Show.

5. The Beatles | Twist And Shout (The Top Notes Cover)
I listened to The BeatlesAt The Hollywood Bowl album before I heard many studio tracks and Twist And Shout which they often opened with always got me so excited. You could hear what made them so exciting when you heard them live... And to think what it must have felt like to be on stage just opened up my imagination.6. Cyndi Lauper | She Bop
On a perfect Pop album it's hard to pick a favorite, but this is the one I remember the most. Synth bliss.

7. Platinum Blonde | Doesn't Really Matter
I loved Platinum Blonde as a kid and my mom let me blast it in the car over and over again. The drum fills in the middle killed me.

8. Led Zeppelin | Black Dog
The first Zep song I got to know taught me a lot about groove. Of course, every drummer goes through a Bonham stage, if not for life.

9. Metallica | Battery
Probably the first Thrash song I ever heard, and it affected me in the sense of the great anticipation to come after the intro. Fast drumming. Textbook Metal.

10. Mötley Crüe | Red Hot
This was probably the first song where I heard the drums and thought that's what I want to do. The double bass drum beat was exciting and it was one of the Crüe's heaviest tracks.

SIDE C | by Clint Lofkrantz

1. The Ronettes | Be My Baby
This song would get paired up to the Eagles, Hotel California on the AM radio station when I was a kid. I would complain to my mom that the Eagles song was long and boring and say her music sucked. Then the Ronettes came on right after and I would secretly love it, but sit there looking like I was in misery not saying anything. That song was the unconscious start to my girl group obsession.

2. Biz Markie | Just A Friend
When I was a kid my grandma would take me to the mall and I would immediately go to the over priced music store, K Records (Not to be confused with the label from Olympia). At the time I bought tape cassettes and was hearing a lot of Rap being played in my backyard from older skateboarders that came to skate my ramp. One of them suggested I buy Rap Traxx. I got the tape cassette Rap Traxx 4 for $17.00 or something crazy like that! I thought Just A Friend was an ingenious song, I knew it was silly, but it really said something to my 8 year old hopeless romantic self!

3. The Smashing Pumpkins | Mayonaise
To be honest Siamese Dream was a big part of my adolescent soundtrack. I remember being on this horrible vacation with my dad (whom I haven't spoken to since I was 14) and his really hideous girlfriend. We drove down the West Coast to California in his van for his sister's wedding, one of the most boring times of my life! I was 13, no one would give me any booze at the wedding and no girls there even close to my age range. It was already a horrible trip that only got worse, the one thing that made me smile during the whole fucking trip was leaving the wedding and hearing Smashing Pumpkins - Mayonaise come on the radio!

4. NOFX | Linoleum
Nostalgia for some of Epitaph's bands, like NOFX, will never stop even if I try! My childhood friend in my early teens introduced me to NOFX, even though he was more of a Hip Hop guy and thankfully got me into groups like the Beastie Boys and A Tribe Called Quest. The first song I heard was Linoleum. Wow! A Punk band that could do harmonies, play faster then any other band I had heard before and still based on a Pop format? That band opened the doors for me to learn guitar and Melody. I saw a guy at my High School who had a shirt with a name-tag on it that said My name is: Noah Fecs...I thought what a clever fucking genius, jealousy ensued.

5. The Lemonheads | Luka (Suzanne Vega Cover)
I heard this Suzanne Vega cover before the original in 1994, which has a lot to do with how I got to know about a ton of music, hearing the cover of a song first then researching to find out who did the original. The song itself struck all the right chords in my head, having that minor in the bridge made it so sweet! I bought the tape cassette from a record store called Lyle's Place in Victoria BC, my friend who took me there said they were a good Grunge band, but ultimately it was the top 40 cover song stuck out the most.6. Nirvana | Smells Like Teen Spirit
This rang true as the anthem for me, and a lot of kids. I took guitar lessons when I was 14 to specifically learn this song, SLTS took over my life in a way, made me start wearing different clothes, it influenced me to be a musician and it made me Slam Dance at school dances, ha ha. Really though, it still sounded like a Pop song to me, but with such a crazy heavy sound. I got really into the whole Seattle Grunge sound and was really bummed when tickets sold out to Lollapalooza and Kurt died before it happened in '94. At the time every band that Nirvana eventually led me to know was playing the festival, like a premonition of Kurt's death, I never got to see any of my 90's Grunge heroes.

7. The Strokes | Someday
This song in particular started opening my horizons with music. I really didn't know more than SF Street Punk from the 90's and Hip Hop. It's a great song and reflects my early 20's; figuring out my life... But it also made me want to find out what influenced them to write that song. The chorus and all around playing on this song was hugely influential for writing in Mode Moderne as well as other projects.

8. The Smiths | This Charming Man
My dear friend and band mate Phillip Intile introduced me to The Smiths. TCM was the first song I heard by them that I remember, making me fall in love with the genre and band. I remember we were riding in his car going skateboarding when he played them for me. After that I would always take note of what was playing in his car. Secretly embarrassed at the time I didn't know a lot of bands from the 80's or 90's that inspired a lot of current music I listened to.

9. The Misfits | Teenagers From Mars
I was 15 years old living on Vancouver Island with a limited knowledge of Music. I really only knew what I listened to at that time and for years after because of my friend Levon from the band Sex Church. He was the music nerd in our skate crew, got us into good Punk, Metal and even some Hip Hop. Anyways I would listen to that song everyday and thinking how fucking rad the Misfits were for having played a style called Horror Punk.

10. Oblivians | Bad Man
In 2002 my childhood friend Levon (Sex Church) and I had met some other musicians through skateboarding in a suburb of Vancouver. We started a band called Ladies Night, we were heavily inspired by the Oblivians, the Hunches and almost any other on In The Red, Sympathy For The Record Industry, or Crypt Records at the time. Bad Man was just one of the best songs I ever heard and I knew it instantly when I heard it! Actually the Garage explosion that happened around the Oblivians/Mummies era had a huge impact on my musical taste and knowledge.